Ripple-Powered App To Debut At Banco Santander

Spanish banking group Santander is launching a same day mobile international payments for personal customers using Ripple’s distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Founded in 1857, Santander Group operates across Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia, partly due to its acquisitions. As of 2013, it had more than 186,000 employees, 14,392 branches, 3.26 million shareholders and 102 million customers. Retail banking – the main aspect of Santander’s operations – generates 74% of the group’s profit.

Over the last 18 months, Santander has been putting Ripple’s technology to the test with bank staffers, transferring payments worth between £10 and £10,000 with Apple Pay and using Touch ID for secure sign-ins. The app, which will soon be available in Spain, Brazil, the UK and Poland, will offer same-day cross-border payments in under a minute and also provide a digital wallet.

“Once the app is downloaded, users need to complete their profile details and can then start to make payments,” Santander said in a statement. “It connects to Apple Pay, where users can confirm payments securely using Touch ID. It lets users transfer between £10 and £10,000, and payments can be made from GBP to EUR and USD. Currently, payments made in EUR can be sent to 21 countries, and US Dollar payments to the USA only.”

A Santander spokesperson said “We plan to launch this in the next few months and we can confirm on the record that we plan to use xCurrent in the project.”